The third quarter challenge that Marilyn announced recently is the Japanese Edo Art Period. I needed to do some historical design work for my Level 3 Art and Design class so I decided I would combine this challenge with homework.

I googled images and found that there are a lot of circular patterns from this art period in Japan. That works out great since we are concentrating on circle designs in my class. There are a lot of circle family crests and also sword guards that are circles.

I printed out a lot of photos of designs that I liked. I then used portions of different ones to try out some circular designs. I started designing with a 1/12 piece of the circle. You can click on the photo to enlarge it if you’d like to see some of the design ideas.

Here’s a closer shot of my interpretation of the first sword guard. I really like how this turned out. I decided it was a bit too intricate for a felt piece though.

But I could still use the design for my homework. I needed to do a white on black design and this was perfect. I transferred the design to black paper and then colored it all in with a white gel pen. If you’ve ever tried using that type of pen to color anything in, it takes a light touch and a lot of time. But the result is worth the effort.

Here I am working out the second design that I want to transfer to felt. It is a bit less intricate. It is also based on one of the sword guard designs with a different center.

Here’s a closer view. The plan is to use this as a resist which will be cut out of interfacing. The resist will be left in the felt. I plan on using a grey, coarser fiber as the base and black merino on top. Then the resist will block the coarser fiber from migrating through and the design will show in black. More to follow!